Neighborhood Walk Assignment Write-Up

For the neighborhood walk assignment, I was assigned to explore Bronzeville with my co-fellow Teddy. I’ve lived in the suburbs for 15 years the most experience I had with Bronzeville was in driving past it on my way into the city, and even then I only knew that was what it was because of the large banner-like sign proclaiming it which is visible from the road. It’s not an area that is ripe for suburban tourists either, which was kind of a relief when we got the assignment because not only had I never been there but I had never really heard anything about it from anyone I knew. We started our walking tour completely by accident at the Illinois Institute of Technology campus. We passed by a huge stone building labeled “Machinery Hall” and Teddy suggested we go in and find someone to talk to. It was a good pairing, because had I been on my own I never would have thought to go into the building, let alone talk to someone inside. I’m by no means a shy person, but being raised and spending your angst-filled, easily embarrassed teen years in the suburbs means constantly doing everything you can not to look like a tourist, even when you’re in a place you’ve never been before. That paired with my dependence on technology made this assignment really jarring for me—I kept taking out my phone to look for directions and then remembering that it was prohibited. It’s novel to spend an extended period of time (even though it was just a few short hours, it’s a few hours more than either of us would usually go without our phones) with my phone in my purse, right there if I need it. Inside Machinery Hall we spoke to a maintenance man named Maurice, who was more than willing to help us with our project. He was funny, warm, and eagerly reflected on his 30+ years of working at IIT and told us about growing up in the projects of Bronzeville, which used to be full of jazz and night clubs. He never explicitly said anything to us about the racial demographic of the neighborhood, which is pretty significant to the area as we later discovered, but did mention a few times that the neighborhood was “changing.” Maurice gave us the address of his church so we could go somewhere if we had more questions, and we left. Afterward, we stopped into admissions because I knew the father of my best friend from elementary school worked there, and although I hadn’t talked to the girl in years, her father was more than happy to talk to us. He’s been working there for 13 years and had never walked around Bronzeville or taken a tour. In fact, he couldn’t really tell us anything about the history of the area, other than the history of the school specifically. He told us that it was funny how “people around here and in the suburbs spend so much of their time not thinking about these areas that are so close to them that they’ve never even been to.” He gave us directions to get to a sculpture that turned out to be a sculpture from the prior week’s scavenger hunt that my group hadn’t made it to. We took the bus over, which was the first time we saw more of the neighborhood than just what was on the IIT campus. Compared to our own area, there were significantly more minorities than there usually are, and that was just on the bus. It was mostly black people, some Hispanics, and a few Asian people. We walked for quite a bit after getting off the bus and stopped at a church—the front doors were locked, but we heard Gospel music from the back so we thought maybe people were there. That door was locked too, but on our way out an older white woman, whom I can describe only as gruff, yelled after us to see what we wanted.  We told her we were doing a school project about the neighborhood and asked if we could come in and talk to some people. She replied that they’re only open on Sundays, and upon further questioning about whether or not we could talk to a pastor, she repeated this, and then essentially asked us to leave. I’m already kind of skeptical about church-based experiences, but nobody I’ve ever encountered in a church setting has asked me to leave before or told me the church was closed—I don’t know much about churches but I had always assumed they were all open all the time so people could come and go as they pleased. We continued walking, past a lot of big hospitals that looked relatively new and fancy, quite a few more churches—mostly Methodist, Baptist, and Episcopalian, although we did pass one Catholic church—and a couple developments of really nice looking condos and apartments. These luxury condos and apartments were peppered by massive, older looking buildings that appeared to be housing, but it was hard to tell from a distance. We found the sculpture we were looking for, the Tribute to the Great Northern Migration, but there were no plaques, no inscriptions, nothing explaining its significance or the year in which it was erected. After looking at it for a moment and commenting on how we had seen so few people, we decided to head back over in the direction we had just come from, to see if we could find somewhere where there were more people. We got off the bus in what I can only guess is downtown Bronzeville, where there were a ton of people, in cars and on foot. Teddy and I were the only white people we saw in this part of the area. We saw the victory monument, looked at the “walk of fame,” and tried to get into the visitor center which ended up being closed. As we walked back to the subway, we found a small historical obelisk shaped sculpture explaining the history of the area in greater detail than anything we had seen anywhere else did, spotted a landmark plaque on the outside of an ACE Hardware denoting its former life as an extremely popular jazz club, and saw the Chicago Police Department headquarters. This was nothing like the more residential or campus parts of the area we had seen—it was mostly businesses, in somewhat decrepit conditions, several fast food restaurants, and a few stretches of blocks that made me feel a little unsafe (mostly just because of the amount of people on the street trying to sell things or pass out flyers or ask for money). It’s not often that I get to be a minority somewhere, which is something that by far white people take for granted. I honestly loved this experience. Certain aspects of it were frustrating, sure, but I’m always excited to go somewhere new, and this was no different especially considering that it’s somewhere I probably never would have visited otherwise. I hope I never stop having experiences like this, and that I never stop learning from them.